> For shorter antennas, I've used weights hanging from the ends of the
> support ropes, and also screen door springs, but I have to take up
> too much slack in the 160m antenna for these solutions to work. I
> need something like a venetian blind shade, that reels in the support
> rope and keeps it under constant tension. Anybody know if anything
> like that is available?
I've thought about this a bit for guy ropes for my 60 foot telescoping
vertical... they always seem to get tangled if it's even a little
windy when I take it down:
I haven't tried it yet, but I was thinking a possible solution would
be a spool with a large diameter driven by smaller spool with a heavy
weight pulling on a cord. If you made the spool diameter ratio 10:1,
for example, you could reel in 60 feet of wire with a 6 foot drop of
the weight.
You'd have to use some stupidly heavy weights to keep reasonable
tension to support a 160m inverted vee with this method, though. I was
considering just using these things to reel in the ropes and using
something else to provide tension while the antenna is up. My
application is to reel in some 1/16" light cord, not keep tension on a
dipole.
- - - - - - -
I also found this:
http://www.firstchoicemarine.com/p-463-anchor-rein-anchor-lift-anchor-line-spool-36-retractable.aspx
for a more turn-key solution, but maybe they aren't long enough?
73,
Dan
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